1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pedal assembly to be used in a variety of vehicles including an automobile, a construction machine, an agricultural machine, an electric car and a solar car and, more particularly, to an improvement of a pedal assembly having its accelerator pedal depressed laterally.
2. Description of Related Art
In the pedal assembly of the prior art for driving the automobile or the like, generally speaking, the brake pedal and the accelerator pedal (or the clutch pedal) are arranged in parallel. In addition, the brake pedal is given a longer depression stroke than that of the accelerator pedal so that its depression has to make a large motion of the driver's leg around the hip joint, that is, the footwork has to follow the shape of letter "U" while moving the heel of the operating foot spatially. This is liable to cause troubles in case a quick operation is required. Specifically, since the operating foot fails to have its heel position fixed during the running operation in accordance with the characteristics of the drivers, it is liable to cause an accident at an emergency by depressing the pedal erroneously or with a delay. Especially in connection with the automatic cars, it has been reported that many accidents are caused because driver has to operate the pedal with one leg and finds difficulty to take the operating rhythm intrinsically.
In order to prevent such troubles in the parallel type pedal assembly, the present inventor has proposed a pedal assembly (as disclosed in Ep-A-0 522 556 A1), in which the accelerator pedal is laterally depressed and adjacently arranged just above the right-hand side of the brake pedal and is urged toward the underlying brake pedal and in which a guide roller is arranged at the right-hand end of the brake pedal while having its circumferential edge portion projected above the brake pedal.
The pedal assembly disclosed above is enabled to establish natural and quick associations between the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal and to guide the driver's foot naturally from the accelerator lever to the brake pedal even at an emergency when the foot gets stiff.